Frameline 2009-Movie Reviews
Jun. 29th, 2009 03:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nakedbee
Whee! I just spent a fun week at Frameline (the San Francisco International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Film Festival). I watched 24 programs in 6 days (and that's not even counting the shorts separately!).
My top picks are:
* Feature: Fruit Fly, a musical about fag hags
* Documentary: Fig Trees, an opera about AIDS activists (and Gertrude Stein, squirrels, and saints)
* Short: Thirteen or So Minutes, two straight guys talk about what they've been doing for the past 13 minutes
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Features
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Fruit Fly
Yay!!! Highly Recommended. This was my favorite feature from the festival. I'll admit that I was pre-disposed to love it, because I had loved Mendoza's previous film "Colma: The Musical" and was super excited to see more in the same style. While that first film was pretty much all about his life, this second film is about his friend Renigen and her life as a fag-hag. She plays Bethesda, a Filipina performance artist living with a bunch of other artists in the Mission District of San Francisco. The music is fun, the staging is fabulously inventive (especially laudable on such a small budget) and the CGI (done by Mendoza's partner) is delightful. It's easy to see why both of his movies have been such hits at Asian and Queer film festivals all over. Hmmm, I wonder if there are film festivals for indie musicals? That would be pretty awesome.
The Baby Formula
Yay!! Recommended. A lesbian couple pioneer a new fertility technique that allows them to mix both partner's DNA to make a baby. Highlights: fake documentary style is quite effective, both actresses really were pregnant during filming, so their performances are very believable and they *look* right, bonus points for one of them women being sciencey (she works at the stem cell research lab) and for the story being sci-fi-ish (the film isn't science focused, but all the science that is in there is extremely well thought out).
Patrik, Age 1.5
Yay! Recommended. It felt like a slash fanfic (which is a compliment, btw). A gay couple anxiously await the arrival of their adopted infant son Patrik. Hilarity ensues when they discover the typographical error that lands them with a homophobic 15 year old instead. Very sweet and funny, with a nice happily-ever-after ending.
Night Fliers
Yay! Recommended. The director said she wanted to make a queer version of the John Hughes teen movies she'd grown up on. Out heroine is a 12 year old tomboy who's new in town. She finds some other friends and they all hang out and grow up together over the course of the school year. I think it should be required viewing in middle school.
Misconceptions
Cool. This was a cute movie. A ridiculously conservative Christian woman from Georgia answers a call from God to be a surrogate mother for a gay married couple from Massachusetts. Hilarity ensues and although at one point there's so much angst & misfortune that it really seems impossible for it to work out, by the end of the film both the couple and the mom end up happily-ever-after.
Born in '68
Cool. This movie was really really really long but it did manage to keep my interest for the whole thing. It spans two generations of characters and 40 years of recent events including student protests, hippie communes, free love, HIV, civil unions, and more student protests. From the blurb, "This gorgeous inter-generational chronicle is a wild ride on the emotional and political roller-coaster of middle-class France and left wing politics."
Until the Moon Waxes
Cool. Ayumi goes to Tokyo for her spring break to check out the "lady bars" to decide if she's gay or not. Cute and sweet.
I Can't Think Straight
Cool. This was a pretty predictable romantic comedy plot-wise, but it had some interesting features. The culture clash between girl #1 (Palestinian Christian raised in Jordan) and girl #2 (British Muslim with Indian immigrant parents) was fascinating. I can't recall ever seeing a depiction of a Jordanian woman on film before. Also, both characters are quite
rich and so the locations and costumes were really gorgeous.
Family
Cool. A group of African American women make a pact: all will come out to their families as lesbians within 30 days. Hilarity and heartbreak in equal measure ensue.
El Nino Pez
Eh. Angsty & slow, it was not surprising that Mr. Bee liked it but I didn't. I have a particular dislike of stories where the big reveal at the end is of someone's secret pregnancy or history of abuse. There was also the dis-bonus that the two girls' entire relationship seemed to consist of various combinations of crying and yelling and telling the other to stay away "for their own good".
Mr. Right
Eh. Confusing at the start (too many characters) and with pretty loose plotting towards the end, I nevertheless quite liked the middle of the film and got satisfyingly invested in a few of the characters. Reminded me a lot of Love, Actually but never achieved the same level of goodness. Still, if you're looking for a sweet ensemble romantic comedy with lots of fit British gay men, this is a pleasant way to spend 90 minutes.
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Documentaries
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Fig Trees
Yay!!!!!!!!!!!! Very highly recommended. Can I be John Greyson when I grow up? This is how documentaries should be done! I absolutely loved this uplifting and funny and surreal opera/documentary about a pair of AIDS activists. I mean, there's a kid in an albino squirrel costume. and a historical bit about Gertrude Stein. and very moving theme about sainthood. and a part where the fictionalized representation of Stein kidnaps the fictionalized versions of the activists and takes them to Niagra Falls. and music video-style segments with drag queens and a rain of colorful pink pills. and the singing is awesome. This is the happiest AIDS documentary I have ever seen.
Making the Boys
Yay! Recommended. Apparently "The Boys in the Band" was a big milestone in gay cinema history. The title was vaguely familiar but I'd never seen it. The documentary was exceptionally well crafted and did a great job explaining to my clueless self the complex legacy of this play-turned-film. It was shown in an unfinished form (although it looked good to me already), so I imagine it will be awhile before it makes it to DVD but it's worth keeping an eye out for.
Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement
Yay! A real joy to watch. An elderly lesbian couple tell the story of their relationship from the early '60s to now. Thea was an excellent photographer and her photos of herself and Edie are gorgeous.
Pop Star on Ice
Cool. This was a very well-executed documentary. I don't follow figure skating, but after this I can totally see why Johnny Weir has such a devoted fanclub. He is not only talented but also fabulously fascinating. I know who I'll be rooting for in the upcoming Olympics.
My Buddy Claudia
Cool. The production values were low and the editing made for some too-slowly-paced sections, but the subject was so amazingly heroic and awesome that I still enjoyed watching this very much. Claudia Wonder is a trans-woman who's been active in public life (porn, punk rock, experimental theater, and queer activism) in Brazil since the 70's. Pretty cool.
College Boys Live
Whoa. This was difficult to watch. The filmmaker did a good job covering a complex and controversial subject but it was quite an uncomfortable experience. He followed the residents of a web-cam house (College Boys Live) for several months, with all the ups (a few) and downs (a lot) experienced by the 18-22 year old boys who lived there. Although there was potential for the house to be a place where the young men got to live rent-free for 6 months while they worked on changing their life for the better (school or job ... which all of them said they were going to do but none of them did), in practice it seemed that they all ended up back where they had started. The guys that run the house talked a good game and did seem to care for the boys, but just looking at the end consequences, the boy ended up broke, in trouble with the police, and directionless while the guys that ran the house got rich and then moved on to a new crop of boys. I usually feel quite supportive of sex work as an occupation but this particular system was pretty hard to like: not actively evil, but at the very least a shamefully wasted opportunity to help people improve their lives.
Greek Pete
OK. The focus of this documentary, Pete, is a male escort in London. He's really ambitious: he wants to be the best at what he does (he wins an award for top male escort in the world) and he wants to make lots of money (he seems to be doing a pretty good job at that so far). He came across as really quite smarmy (like an over-achieving car salesman) though, so it was hard for me to like him.
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Shorts
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Bi Request
Thirteen or So Minutes = yay
My favorite short from this year's festival. Two straight guys discuss their feelings about the sex they just had. I mean, if that description isn't enough I don't know what else to say. :) Well-executed, with good acting, editing, and writing.
Flotsam = pretty good
A female naval officer stationed in SoCal goes on a sorrow-filled road trip
others = mixed
Global Queers
All of the documentaries shown in this program were fantastic.
Busted: a look at the mak nyah (M to F transexual) community in Malaysia
Welcome to My Queer Bookstore: this Taiwanese store celebrates 10 years of activism in the community
Queer Sarajevo Festival 2008: documents the anti-gay backlash that shut down the festival
Krudas: focuses on two Cuban lesbian hip hop artists; upbeat and inspiring
Dyke Delights
Numerology = super funny; delightful in its simplicity
Queerer Than Thou = cute
others = mixed
Ddingdong!
Cute & funny. One of my favorites.
Worldly Affairs
The Saint was sweet, Mother Knows Best was funny, Baby Shark will probably give me nightmares (I would have appreciated a warning for the senseless violence and lack of plot), and the rest were OK.
Swiss Treats
Dancing to Happiness was cute but the others were only OK.
Queer Trans TV
I didn't really like any of these, actually. From the description I was really looking forward to this program, so I was a bit disappointed at the non-entertaining-ness of the films. That said, it's always inspiring to see what local folks are able to achieve with limited resources.
ETA: I finally got myself a Delicious account and have been slowly using it to make a recs page. The film reviews & links are also there.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-30 12:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-30 06:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-30 02:50 pm (UTC)Thank you for the reviews/recommendations!